SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

How did you find out ?

Was the WS's guilt eating away at them for keeping the past A a secret for so long ?

WS's responses welcomed.

[This message edited by Dorothy123 at 2:14 PM, October 12th (Friday)]

I knew about some infidelity. It was minimized and I rugswept.

Then years later, she was doing something and it hit her that she had hidden an entire AP and a bunch of info. And she just couldn't not tell. She was certain I'd leave and divorce her. But she told anyway.

I guess it was guilt. Maybe some regret. Remorse was a ways off at that point.

Some of the huge difficulties is the lack of concrete evidence and not knowing when "I don't remember" is legit.

Another is she sees the years from her last AP till confessing as time she did great work on her becoming someone else. I see those years as perpetuated waywardness and stealing the truth and my choices from me.

WSs who think they can do the work to better themselves apart from their BS being informed... maybe you can.

But I can tell you that I do not value any of her so called work while keeping me in the dark.

He had a second A, and AP#2 told me about #1 a decade earlier. Even he doesn't know why he told her. If he hadn't, I still wouldn't know... 🙄

[This message edited by doigoordoistay at 2:14 PM, October 12th (Friday)]

I found out by looking at his email account that he had been involved in a sexual arrangement with someone else the first several months of our dating relationship although he told me we were exclusive. Dday was Oct 1, 2016 - almost 3 years after the end of the A and we had been married 1 1/2 years at that point. I think my H felt guilt to some extent but I don't believe it was eating away at him. He would have taken it to his grave.

I was suspicious during a time period while it was happening , but he managed to convince me I was wrong...

about a year after they last saw each other ( she lives on a different continent ) , he suddenly became defensive when we were looking at old pics on his ipad...this led to some snooping from me , which led to some more, then I insisted he leave the ipad with me.

Took some digging , but he forgot to erase the trail of texts and that is when it blew apart.

I always knew something was wrong. And I had asked follow up questions for years about a so called friend of the family (family dinners with them, etc.).

Originally, she planned to take the secret to her grave. And one day my wife realized there would always be a distance in our relationship and she went for some all in honesty.

She confessed. Sort of. She initially kept the details to a minimum, but after a few weeks of SI and understanding TT, I got the whole sordid story.

Guilt was a part of it, but she honestly thought she was protecting me.

It wasn't protecting me.

Hate that it happened, glad she told me.

Rebuilding something far more authentic these days.

It was a freak coincidence where I was looking for an older email i sent and through a mistake where all of our gmail accounts pooled to my phone, I noticed she sent several emails from a personal account to a different personal account. The attached photos in the first few emails were of our eldest as a child, the photos in the last email were screenshots that spelled out a relationship, she at one point said "if you come over, I wont be sleeping with you."

At first I though, "huh, that's kind of odd" then the reality that you dont tell people that sex isn't an option unless it was at one point.

My wife didnt TT me and didnt really hold back information, she would answer questions exactly as I ask. I sincerely believe she wanted to tell me but never would have. After 3 years after the A ended, according to her, it got easier to not tell as the days pass.

That's why the confession is important, the continuation of lying by omission is just the tail end of the affair. Her affair start 2011, last contact sometime in 2014, officially ended in 2017 on dday.

I found out 7 years after her adultery ended. When I say ended I mean that the PA ended as far as I can determine. She was still conversing with him by e-mail and phone and attending meetings that he also attended.

I had been very suspicious for more than a year and had accused her of cheating with him. She denied and swore before God and a whole lot of other things and I had no proof. Like whoami said, she convinced me I was wrong. I probably wanted to believe I was wrong.

The PA ended when she moved to a field office over 2 hours away from HO. I took early retirement. We bought land to ranch. I built buildings, fences, water lines, power, etc., etc. I was fully occupied.

A little while before I found out she told me she'd called him to get information about selling some property she inherited almost 3 hours south of where he lived. That opened up all of the can of worms for me again. I kept at it and finally put together a 7 page document of all of the circumstantial evidence I had and implied I had more. She confessed if you can call it that.

She was angry, defensive, accusatory, gaslit, blameshifted, minimized, TT'd, TT'd, TT'd. Nothing she said lined up and I kept at it. I had to drag every thing I did get out of her. I finally got to the point that whenever she said "no" to a question I would ask "before God". I guess she didn't want to swear falsely before God anymore. But I asked "before God" for months. Each time she would say "that's it, that's all". Except it wasn't for months. Then the dam opened up to some degree and she revealed stuff from before we married and then said "that's all". I finally said "that's all before God" and got some more. And then some more. And then....

She was going to take it to the grave with her. She didn't feel guilty. Guilt didn't eat away at her until she had to confess. She fought it every step of the way and only revealed what she got trapped into for a long time.

I now know that if your gut tells you something is wrong , it most likely is

We, as humans need to trust our instincts and not ignore them

Found out 7 years after. Still don't know exactly why she confessed. I had asked many times over the years. Like so many say, if your gut is telling you something. That particular day and time I guess was the right time to ask. Ironically, we were getting ready to go to a friends wedding. What I got was a minimal partial truth, enough to make my knees weak. Then it was months of TT. It altered not just my past, but the rest of my life.

Check out the "For Those Who Found Out Years Later" thread in the I can relate section. Its a long long read.

You should ask my ww that question. 18 fing years before i found out.

Found out during an major argument when she got very emotional. The affair was during our engagement and lasted 2 months. I found out exactly 11 years and 3 kids later. Major lies and TT for 5 weeks and TT over the next year. Found out that they kept in touch and met several times through much of our marriage as "just friends."

Finding this out has destroyed me. It has been 18 months and she thinks we are doing fine and wants to "move forward." I am not ... still questioning everything and silently suffering from what seems to be moderate PTSD. It all feels like a big lie.

t/j. WTFOVER, you could well have PTSD. In a TEDxRiverton video Dr. Kevin Skinner states that 70% (IIRC) of BS have PTSD to some degree. I do/did. I suggest you get treatment for it. What a difference.

Thanks for the replies everyone!

I'm a bit late to the party it seems but my WH confessed to a ONS 12 years after it happened. I then got TT about other behavior...EA, attempts at another PA. I still don't really know why he confessed and at times I'm overcome with the feeling that there's more i don't know but at other times I feel i know it all. My 'gut instinct' seems broken.

Even though my H didn’t find out years later that was my fear him finding out years later and everything we did at that point would of been destroyed . We were separated at the time and talking about getting back together. I didnt want to rebuild our M base on lies or him thinking he was the one that messed up it was actually me. I knew he deserved the truth so he could make a authentic choice for himself. I did question if that was the right move after telling him but I am glad I did. It was and will probably be the hardest thing I ever did but I didn’t want to rob my H from his choices and didn’t want him to think our M was “real” when it was actually fake.

I found out 20 years later. It was odd how I found out. I was in a child custody lawsuit against my daughter for my granddaughter. I was under a lot of stress and my doctor put me on Prozac. The drug made me have vivid memories while I was sleeping, they were not dreams but vivid memories. I remembered things that happened 20 years before that bothered me. I was crazy busy back then and did not have the time to focus on those things. I started asking my wife questions and I was getting unsatisfying answers. This went on for over a year. I finally messaged the POSOMs ex wife to aske her if anything had went on. My wife confessed moments before the woman answered me. I was and still am blown away! DDay was 15 months ago and I am still struggling.

Thanks for the responses

There's a thread in ICR:

https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/forums.asp?tid=349697

I found out 35 years after the first of 4 infidelities/APs. (I wonder, 35years-later may be a record here on SI?)

How ? It was the day before Christmas, just before our children arrived. We were in the middle of an awesome camping holiday. She said something to me during a stupid/small argument/disagreement that set bells ringing. I seethed over the longest family Christmas together. I had to wait till after my children had left to confront her. When she started to talk, pretty much the whole story flooded out straight away. It has taken me years to understand & work through all the things she said.

Was it the guilt ? Considering the way it all flooded out? - maybe, I don't know. While she was telling me it was like old friends having fond memories, she had this big smile as she remembered stuff!

I have since discovered that she is a 'put it all in a box' type person. That lid was closed after each A and our life resumed as normal until the next A. I went through hell each time.

This time the lid opened and I got to see inside

I have always been a believer of 'give a person enough rope and he will hang himself'. This proved to be true in her case.